So, Gordon Brown proudly announces that 1,000 troops are to be withdrawn from Iraq.
The BBC headlines the story “UK troops in Basra cut by 1,000”.
Job done? Well, one small problem. You see, Brown might say “1,000” and the BBC might report “1,000” but you know what? 500 of those troops were already coming home anyway. So it’d more be a matter of “Brown announces withdrawal of 500 troops and then adds in 500 more in the hope that no-one would remember that was already happening anyway”.
As Ming Campbell says:
“Any troop withdrawal from Iraq is welcome, but this is a cynical effort to manipulate the figures.”
Remind me. What happened to all that leaving spin behind stuff?
UPDATE: Oh dear. This turned out to just be a brief and incomplete summary of the full sorry mess which turned 2,000 into zero.
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3 Comments
At least this coverage is not so bad as the hysteria from Tory Boy Bloggers. Have you seen the text of the announcement Mark and the notes for editors? Or just some garbled version?
Clearly it has been the pattern for sometime to get several bites of the cherry with any news of this kind. Prospect of, budget for, firm plans for, actually happening now, actuality of being done.
But usually GB would say somewhere in the announcement something like: This 500 is in addition to the 500 already announced on XX/YY. He is better than Blair at that detail.
Anyway, never mind. The Tory foaming at the mouth brigade want every i dotted and every t crossed in announcements to parliament which is (a) silly and (b) would be condemned by them if it happened.
What? No good news or action during recesses?
Of course the reason given is that our troops are “handing over” control to the “Iraqi forces”. Does anyone imagine they are not already infiltrated by insurgents? Does anyone really think that the regions “handed over” are now relatively safe and secure? If they were, the journalists will go there and say so, maybe even Brown could do that. But he won’t because it is too dangerous to go there.
In truth Iraq today is a no-win situation. Whether are troops stay or leave we are dammed, but we still have to make a choice. What is going on is nothing less than propaganda. The occupying forces in Iraq are defeated and there is nothing anyone can do about it. All the occupying troops should leave. Iraq will turn into chaos, but that is what it is in most regions today anyway.
In the meantime our troops stay, putting their lives at risk in order to prevent Gordan Brown from looking stupid under the pretence that they are “finishing a job”. A high price to pay for a politician’s vanity.
That should read
“whether our troops stay or leave …”
Sorry about that, cannot edit comments.